deeza

Hi, we are landing at Luton airport and my idea is to hire a car and drive to Bath for a night and then head up to Liverpool over 5 days stopping in various spots eg..Chesters. Is this a sensible or ridiculous idea. Would we need to book accommodation ahead for 2 adults and a 15 year old in july or could we just stop and stay where we please? How many hours driving does this entail. Thanks everybody.

mrgrumpy

this is a bizarre route, you will be traveling 130 miles south west (about 2.5 hrs) to bath for 1 night. Then traveling back north for over 300 miles to liverpool (at least 6-7 hours) the sensible thing to do would be to go the liverpool first then travel down to bath at the end of your days, otherwise you will be traveling the same route on the 1st and 2nd day with not much time to see bath. whatever time of the day you arrive you will need to leave at least mid-morning to travel all the way to liverpool. Personally at the time of year you are planning i would book ahead so that you do not use any of your very limited time looking for accommodation, it could take you a few minutes or a few hours. Not worth the risk to spend time looking for accommodation.

Gordon_R

>>Then traveling back north for over 300 miles to liverpool (at least 6-7 hours)

Complete nonsense. It's only 190 miles and you could easily do this in 3 to 4 hours, with motorway nearly all the way. In fact, as Bath and Liverpool are relatively close, there's not much point in spending 5 days travelling between them stopping off en route at different places (if that's what was meant). This would entail all the hassle of re-packing and messing around with hotel check-in/check-out to travel maybe just another 50 miles or so to the next stop.

A good example is Chester, which is a mere 20 miles from Liverpool! You could stay in either of these places and see the other as a very easy day trip.

mrgrumpy

opps its 300k not miles my mistake. But i must say i have never heard anyone say that bath and liverpool are relatively close. a couple of hundred miles on english motorways having just arrived from ???? is still hard work. The M5 is always very crowded. As the previous person says better to have only one or two bases and avoid all the new stops but would still leave bath as last day instead of retracing my steps after having just arrived.

janisj

"Is this a sensible or ridiculous idea"

OK - a few questions.

Are you flying in long haul or just over from the continent? Do you have to do it in that order (Ending up at Liverpool by a certain date)? Are both Bath and Liverpool musts?

Your current route is pretty weird but could make sense if the touring between Bath and Liverpool is a point of the trip. Lots to see/do between the two cities: Bath, South Wales, the Cotswolds, Shropshire, North Wales, the Peak District and Chester are just a few.

What did you hope to see enroute? Bath, a day in South Wales, 2 days in the Cotswolds and one day in either north Wales or the Peaks would eat up you 5 days for sure.

BUT - driving from Luton to Bath after a long haul flight is crazy and does border on the ridiculous.

If Bath isn't a must -- a better option IMO would be Luton > Oxford > The Cotswolds > North Wales or the Peaks > Liverpool.

deeza

We are arriving from Paris and are possibly flying to Belfast from Liverpool. My 15 year old daughter would like to see Bath but we can change her mind for her I am sure. We will have been staying for 5 or 6 days at a time in one place in Europe and also have a week booked in London in August plus 5 days in the Dover area so we thought a bit of a road trip might show us some different things but....maybe not this much of a road trip. I have never been to England so am not sure of distances, roads etc. Any other advice would be gratefully received. P.S. I know you will all tell me that Dover is not the best place to stay but we have to be there for a swim!

flanneruk

There are no long haul flights into Luton a foreign visitor is likely to take, so deeza will have come off a 1-3 hr flight.

Luton to Bath is an almost painless 130 mile, 2 hr, car trip entirely by dual carriageway. It'll take almost as long to find your hotel once there, though.

Bath's a decent centre to drive elsewhere round the Cotswolds from: Liverpool's a good base for Liverpool (to which there's infinitely more than the Beatles), Chester and some of N Wales.

Depending on what you want to see, a base in each of Bath and Liverpool makes perfect sense. BUT don't underestimate some English drive times. Bath to and from Oxford in a dsay, for example, can easily wipe out half the day's sightseeing time. So can either Bath or Liverpool to most of central England.

So if, say the Industrial Revolution stuff round Telford matters to you, it wouldn't make sense to limit yourself to overnights in Liverpool and Bath.

Decide what you want to see, then use a journey planner like theaa.com. Respondents on this site give better answers to specific questions like "do I need to prebook in Telford in mid July?" than to things that invite uninformed prejudice like "is it a ridiculous idea to drive from Bath to Liverpool?"